Most Hated And Most Loved States In America [Nationwide Polling]

Americans travelling to other states for their next vacation are more likely to pick Hawaii and Colorado over California and Illinois if their decision is based solely on the states they like and the states they want to avoid.

Public Policy Polling interviewed 1,200 people and in their questions they asked how each person felt about each of the 50 states, they then arranged those responses to create a list of the 50 states in terms of popularity.

As the numbers revealed Hawaii, Colorado, Tennessee, South Dakota and Virginia were overwhelmingly liked while California, Illinois, New Jersey, Mississippi and Utah ended up with negative polling numbers.

What might be most interesting isn’t which states are loved and hates but rather the fact that most states were seen as “indifferent” by responding parties. In fact two-thirds of responding parties said they were “not sure” about most states.

The study also found that political affiliation plays a big part in which states are chosen as liked or disliked.For example Democrats liked California 91 points more than Republicans while Republicans liked Texas 92 points more than Democrats.

The study in general found that Democrats and Republicans differed greatly on which states they preferred with responses falling squarely into what we call the “red” and “blue” states.

Here’s the top 5 most popular and top 5 least liked states:

Most popular:

Hawaii—54-10 (+44)

Colorado—44-9 (+35)

Tennessee—48-14 (+34)

South Dakota—42-8 (+34)

Virginia—45-13 (+32)

Least popular:

California—27-44 (-17)

Illinois—19-29 (-10)

New Jersey—25-32 (-7)

Mississippi—22-28 (-6)

Utah—24-27 (-3)

Do you have your own list of favorite and most hated states? Feel free to share your favorites in our comments section.